by David Safier
This sounds right to me for so many reasons.
Nine American Indian graduates of The University of Arizona's College of Education will begin their professional careers as teachers or administrative leaders on the Tohono O'odham Nation or in schools with high American Indian enrollment thanks to a program funded by Tohono O'odham Community College.
[snip]
These nine graduates are part of Project NATIVE III, a program run by Tohono O'odham Community College with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The college entered into a partnership with the UA in 2000 to recruit and prepare American Indians to serve as K-12 public school teachers.
If I went to teach at a school with high American Indian enrollment, I might be a terrific teacher, but I couldn't have the positive effect as a role model these new teachers will bring. There's nothing that says, "You can do it" better than someone who comes from your background who has done it. I could say, "You can do it," but they're living proof.
Every time one person from a racial/ethnic group that is underrepresented in professional circles succeeds as an educated person and a professional, ten others in the next generation are a step closer to doing the same thing. It works on the kids inside the community who see evidence of the possibilities of them succeeding, and it works on the rest of us outside the community who become more accustomed to the idea that "those people," whoever they are, can do what everyone else does and deserve to be accepted at the highest levels of attainment.
One of the few things I give Bush credit for is putting Colin Powell and Condi Rice into the public eye. I'm not fond of either of them, but I have to ask myself, would Obama be president right now if they hadn't been in the spotlight for the past eight years, at the highest levels of power and influence? My guess is, Obama very well might have been an also-ran in the primaries. Like everyone else, he stood on the shoulders of those who came before him. Powell and Rice are two whose shoulders he stood on. And who knows how many African American kids and young adults are right now climbing on top of Obama's shoulders for a look into their futures?
Let's hope a whole bunch of American Indian kids climb on the shoulders of these new young teachers and see farther into the realm of possibility than others who came before them.
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